> You can be held in contempt and face jail time for not participating in an investigation.
I anal but isn’t that a pretty slippery slope? Like someone rapes me or tries to kill me and the law will throw me in prison for refusing to relive those moments?
Also I’m pretty sure jstor didn’t want to press charges but the overzealous prosecutors did horrible things to Aaron Swartz anyways.
The district attorney for New Orleans, Leon Cannizzaro, has come under fire for not only issuing "fake subpoenas" that threaten jail time, he's actually arrested the victims and kept them incarcerated until trial in some cases.
It's important to note that the state of Louisiana uses a completely different system of law than the rest of the United States, based off the French civil code.
It gives judges and prosecutors a lot of leeway in how they handle cases.
Consider this situation: Alan assaults his partner Beth. He is reported by a neighbour, and Beth cooperates.
But Alan is an abuser who knows all of the tricks for exerting mental, emotional, and physical control over Beth. He convinces her to say nothing in court.
Some people argue—correctly—that threatening Beth with consequences for failing toi testify truthfully about the events she recounted to police when questioned is hurting the victim.
Others argue—also correctly—that without being able to compel victims like Alice to follow-through with the prosecution, we enable and even encourage domestic abusers to witness-tamper.
I don’t know that there is one easy works-in-all-circumstances approach.
Yes that is exactly the case. Often judges do order witnesses who express reluctance to testify into custody so that they can be sure that they will show up for the trial.
This is extremely rare in the US judicial system, and prosectors tend not to like take cases where the victim or a key witness is no longer willing to testify.
Yes, judges and lawyers for both parties in a case can legally compel witnesses to show up and testify, but doing so tends to damage the credibility of the witness, which can be fatal for their testimony.
I anal but isn’t that a pretty slippery slope? Like someone rapes me or tries to kill me and the law will throw me in prison for refusing to relive those moments?
Also I’m pretty sure jstor didn’t want to press charges but the overzealous prosecutors did horrible things to Aaron Swartz anyways.